


this love came back to me

by garden of succulents (staranise)



Series: ain't licked yet [7]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (Ish) - Freeform, Aftercare, Begging, Exes, First Time, Getting Back Together, Jack showing Bitty what Kent likes, Jack using his knowledge of Kent against (?) him, M/M, Multi, Pet Names, Praise Kink, Self-Hatred, Threesome, negotiated consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:28:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7646641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/garden%20of%20succulents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He really had given up hope that this man would ever love him back again.  He doesn't know why he's getting the chance now. </p><p>(And for all that Jack and Bitty say--he really <i>doesn't </i>think this might have happened if he were still whole and healthy and playing his hardest.  He can't picture it happening.  That is, he can't picture <i>this </i>happening and it's right in front of him; any other scenario is so bizarre it's off the charts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Ain't Licked Yet_ is a series being written irregularly and out-of-order, about Kent Parson's career-ending injury and what happened after.

Bittle’s melted into Jack, poured against his side like a viscous liquid, and Kent’s lying on his back in the armchair with his head propped on one armrest and his knees over the other.  This is the kind of happy calm he and Jack used to need drugs for, not the memory of half a glass of wine and most of a cherry pie.  (And, well, some really serious painkillers on Kent’s part, but that’s him all the time these days.)  “Yeah,” Bittle’s saying, “I gotta admit, it was kinda… hard to take you seriously as a coach.  I mean, you’re good about hockey, but _Lord.”_  He wrinkles his nose and chuckles.

“Thank you,” Kent says wryly, “for not undermining my credibility to your teammates.”  Once it’s out of his mouth he’s surprised to realize he meant it: he is, in fact, grateful that Bittle kept circumspect and they survived the season without unprofessionalism.  

“I don’t think it would’ve _undermined,_ ” Bitty says muzzily.  “Just… complicated everythin’.  Made people wonder.  But it was like, more’n a year before you came’n worked with us professionally, so it wasn’t relevant, me’n Chowder agreed.”  He takes the glass of water Jack hands him and drinks some before contemplating its contents.  “But I haven’t got anythin’ bad to say about you anyway, that was like the fuckin’ gold standard of Kegster hookups.”

Jack is nearly caught with water in his mouth at that, but at the last minute he swallows it without laughing.  Carefully, he puts his glass down.  He’s smiling, and Kent guesses he can afford to be complacent about the time Kent and Bitty slept together; Jack’s the one who came out of that weekend with a boyfriend, not Kent Parson.

“I mean, Jesus,” Bitty says.  “It was like something out of freshman orientation, how good you were asking for consent.”

Kent would try to take it as the compliment it’s meant to be, but just that instant Jack looks over at him with an absolutely knowing smile, and Kent can feel himself go scarlet.

“Cheri,” Jack murmurs, wrapping an arm around Bitty’s shoulders, “that wasn’t him asking for consent.”

“It so was,” Kent says loudly, from his nest in the chair.  “Fuckin’ enthusiastic consent advocate of the year, right here. You don’t hold the monopoly on that shit, Ivy boy.”

“Huh?” Bittle says, tilting his head back ineffectually to look at Jack.

Jack grins over at him, the _shit._   “Okay then, you want me not to tell him?”

Kent almost wants to tell Jack to go fuck himself, spit it out with the ball of loneliness that comes from curling up alone when the two of them are twined together like _that_ , and then he wants to demand a gold star for not acting on the first vicious instinct he has.  “Fuck, whatever.”  He tries to sound bored.  “They’re your secrets as much as mine, tell your boyfriend whatever.  I don’t care.”

Jack looks at Kent, considering intently while the arm draped over Bittle’s shoulders gently strokes his neck with his thumb.  Kent feels suddenly, miserably certain that he didn’t do a good job of coming off nonchalant there; that Jack’s seen something mean and unhappy and is probably gonna pounce on it like a terrier.

Fuck.  They’d been having such a good night.

“Know the easiest way in the world to embarrass Kent?” Jack asks Bittle, and Kent groans because he doesn’t know what’s coming but, god, why did he invite this?  

“What?” Bittle asks.

Jack unwraps his arm and gets up.  Gets up, off the couch, so his boyfriend has to reposition himself to keep from falling over.  Gets up, walks across the living room, crouches next to the chair so his face is near Kent’s upside-down one.

“Kent Vincent Parson,” Jack tells his boyfriend, from where he’s crouching near Kent’s head, “absolutely cannot stand it when people tell him what a good person he is.”

“Oh god,” Kent says, clapping his hands to his face.

Jack pokes a finger into Kent’s head in demonstration and says, “He falls to absolute pieces if I say he’s still one of the best friends I’ve ever had.”  His hand lands flat on Kent’s head, smoothing his curls.  “Or that he’s still one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about hockey, or one of the best possible coaches Samwell ever could have had to step in this year.”

“Zimms,” Kent chokes out from behind his hands, hunched and curled up and mortified.   _“God.”_

Jack leans down to wrap his arms around Kent’s chest, cheek against Kent’s head, and hugs him.  “I’ll stop if you want,” he says soothingly.  “I don’t mind if you’re done for the night.”

Kent lets a shaky breath out from behind the shelter of his hands, then closes his eyes and uses his good hand to rub down his face, pulling trembling emotion and expression from its uncertain muscles and pull it into a moment of calm.  He knows, intuits, remembers, the result of the word _stop_ , and that Jack still remembers down to his bones what he’s doing to Kent.

“I’m okay,” he says, and opens his eyes.  Bittle’s not drowsy-looking at all; he’s perched on the edge of the couch, upright, alert, watching Kent avidly, and Kent almost quails again because he knew what he was letting himself in for with Jack but he didn’t even count on Bittle–on Bittle wanting to–

Jack, very slowly, leans over, in, and turns his head with deliberate precision to kiss Kent’s neck.  “That okay?” he asks, breath ghosting Kent’s earlobe.

Kent doesn’t have a word or a sob that encompasses his response to that, thinks, _Okay to bring water to a dying man in a desert?_  even as he reaches a hand back, questing fingers finding Jack’s shoulder, his hair, the back of his neck.  “Yeah,” he breathes.

Closing his eyes as Jack leans forward and lets his lips touch Kent’s ear, he has a sudden reality to match that wild, hyperbolic thought: Anything they to tonight–any sex he has with Jack, or Eric, or anyone else in the world–isn’t going to take his pain away. It isn’t going to fix him.  It’s not just negative thinking, it’s realizing that the circumstances of his life are too complicated for anyone to wave a magic wand over.  Even if he has the best sex of his life, he’s going to wake up in the morning and take a handful of pills and have to push himself through a haze of pain to do the work that helps him walk again.

But the other thing he knows, having turned his head to allow Jack unabashed access and with his ear between Jack’s teeth, is that anything he does with anyone in this room tonight is going to feel _really, really good._

“Can I–” Bittle says, small and hesitant, and Kent disconnects himself from the desire to never move again from a position where Jack is doing something to him, turns his head and looks.  Bittle is still perched on the edge of the couch.

“God,” Kent says, a little rasp of wonder in his voice.  “I mean, you _want_  to?”

Bittle smiles, odd and wistful and sweet, walks over.  Uses Jack for balance when he gets down on one knee, and waits while Kent tries to jerk himself upright into more of a sitting position.  “Is it,” he says, when Kent’s settled, “okay if I kiss you?”

“ _Hell_  yeah,” Kent says, voice rough, and Bittle reaches out to put a hand flat against Kent’s chest.

“You’re beautiful,” Bittle whispers, looking him soulfully in face, and Kent’s face floods with heat again; he bites his lip, looking away.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Jack soothes, reaching out; his fingers gently touch the fist Kent’s raising to his mouth.  Kent does press it to his lips for a minute, blinking back tears, but finally he lets his breath out and drops it again, looks at Jack’s warm and steady concern from beside him, and lowers his hand into Jack’s palm.  Jack’s fingers thread between his, from behind; Jack knows not to restrain him as much as… support him in restraining himself.

Kent feels that sureness of restraint, and knows acutely that his other hand would be much slower getting to his face; they’ve got him at the place he fears and longs for, and more than anything fears no one will ever want to join him in.

Jack’s other hand is brushing his cheeks with the back of his knuckles, soothing his hot face, and after another shaky breath Kent gathers his courage and looks up again to meet Bittle’s eyes.

“I really like you,” Bittle says honestly.  “I don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with, but I really want to kiss you.”

Kent nods, jerkily, and thankfully that’s enough; Bittle’s leaning into his space, cupping his face, burying his hands in his hair, kissing Kent soft and sweet and gentle like something made of lips and tongue and sunlight.  Kent sighs when the kiss breaks.

“Oh, sugar,” Bittle breathes, part endearment and part expletive.

“Can you,” Kent says unsteadily, “call me that again?”

Bittle looks at him, a little uncertain, looks at Jack, nods.  “Sure thing, sugar.”

Kent lets his head roll back against the backrest of the chair, looks at Jack.  “Zimms,” he says, “you might as well tell your boyfriend that little secret.”

Jack smiles at him, leans in, kisses the spot right between his eyebrows.  Kent closes his eyes for it.  Then he settles back on his haunches and Kent switches his gaze to Bittle, who’s just watching them with a calm kind of curiosity.

“So what you saw in a different way,” Jack said, “is how you know he’s into it.  His other big secret is, Kenny likes to beg.”

Bittle processed this, witht he slow nod of someone working through information, and looked inquiringly at Kent.  Who swallowed and said, “Please?”

God, what if that didn’t make sense?   _Please let me ask you.  Please be a person I can ask.  Please only give me what you want to.  Please–_

“Oh, sugar,” Bittle crooned, leaning into his space again.  He balanced himself by setting his elbows on either side of Kent’s head, planking in the space between. Their lips were a dizzying breath apart.  “You can ask me for _anything.”_


	2. Chapter 2

Kent wakes up to find Zimms has fucking spooned him in his sleep.  He freezes for a minute, panicking, looking at Bittle’s careless sleeping face.  The warm weight against his back, the face pressed into his shoulder, are honestly the best thing he’s felt in months, last night _included_ , but the arm encircling him is almost definitely Jack’s and he’s left with a dilemma: does he gently extricate himself now and head this off at the pass, or wait for Jack to wake up and draw away?

 He’s trying to plan.  Navigating between two sleeping people when there’s not just enough room to roll onto your front is really complicated, especially when the only arm you have free is a lot weaker than you’re used to.  He’s almost got something figured when Jack whispers, “Go back to fucking sleep, Kenny.”

He freezes again, then says as quietly as he can, “Uh, hey.  Didn’t know you were up, buddy.”

Jack presses his face into Kent’s shoulderblade sleepily.  “Muted my alarm five minutes ago.”

“Ah,” Kent says, questions and apprehensions dancing on the tip of his tongue.

“Want me to move for you?” Jack murmurs, sounding a little bit like he’s smiling yet also like he expects Kent to want to freak out and _no homo_  his way out of this.

“Ah, no,  I just, didn’t know, you…wouldn’t.”

Zimms shifts, moving his head up to slowly and very deliberately kiss the part of Kent’s neck just next to his spine and under his hairline, where he used to be very sensitive and used to, once upon a lost youth, like to be kissed very much.  “If I didn’t want to be here,” he says slowly, “I wouldn’t have. Last night or this morning. I do trust Bits enough to leave him on his own.”

Kent lets himself sag back against Jack, trying to get a look at him; Jack makes room for him to roll onto his back, brackets him along his weaker side.  He finds himself searching Jack’s eyes worriedly, and Jack reaches over to lay fingers across Kent’s mouth. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and takes his hand away.

Kent checks that Bitty’s still asleep, looks back at Jack and whispers, “So, was this just a pity fuck, or…?”

Jack sighs, dropping his head to Kent’s chest, “No,” he says, looking up at him again.  “It has nothing to do with…” The accident, the end of Kent’s career, is effectively elided in the silence.  Jack curves a tiny corner of his mouth.  “We talked about doing this… not long after we got together, actually.  It came up kind of natural. Bits likes you. And we said, _maybe, if he ever stops being such an asshole.”_

Okay, yeah, that’s fair, that’s a fair assessment of Kent’s personal relationships but Jack is kissing where his brows are crumpled, smoothing down his burning cheeks, gently shushing him.  “I was _not_  saying you’re an asshole, Kenny.  It was just…”  He presses a cheek against Kent’s.  “You weren’t very careful with us.  You always had different things on your mind.”

“You like me more now that I’m broken,” Kent says before he could stop himself.

Jack draws back a little, not looking impressed.  “You,” he says, tapping Kent in the middle of the chest, “are the world’s most miserable _fils de salaud_  when you’re broken. Three months ago I would have duct taped your mouth shut myself. Whatever shit you’ve gotten together since then, it’s not because of your injury.  You being good to Bittle, his team, me, that’s why. If you could’ve managed that playing hockey, might’ve happened then too.”

“I don’t have my shit together.”  Kent’s chest is feeling tight.  he’s not sure why he feels the need to say this, to keep bringing it up.  His eyes are stinging. “S’all fucked up.”

Zimms just starts kissing him, putting a hand down on his other side so he can lean in, kissing his temple and ear and down his neck, while something hoarse and ugly comes out of Kent’s mouth like a sob.  Someone takes his numb hand with gentle fingers and he looks over to see Bittle awake, sleepy-eyed and full of compassion; he scoots into Kent’s arm, brushing Jack’s torso in a morning greeting.

“Thought you might not wake up with a good head,” Bitty says, while Zimmermann nuzzles the join of Kent’s neck and shoulder.

“Why are you bothering with me?” Kent asks.

“Oh sweetheart,” Bitty sighs, and leans over to kiss him.  He catches Kent’s lower lip in his teeth after, kisses it before letting it go.  He rests his forehead on Kent’s.  “Because we want to.”  He takes Kent’s hand.

Jack looks up at him, quiet steady eyes.  Part of the nuzzling has been his stubble, the first week of a Playoff beard.  Kent wonders if he should keep getting shaved, if he should grow his beard out.  The Aces didn’t make playoffs.  Fans stopped shaving until their favourite team got knocked out of Playoffs.  Would he, should he keep it as long as Jack was in?  See if he could keep hanging on until June, if Jack went that far?

“I need to take my pills,” he says, because he does; the headache that always gnaws at him is a little darker right now thanks to the stress.

Jack gets up to dig them out of Kent’s luggage while Bitty keeps holding Kent’s hand.  Kent grips it back.  Bitty’s talking about breakfast, about pancakes, moving the hair from Kent’s face with his fingers, and it’s fucking wonderful.

Jack gives him the handful of pills, which he pops in his mouth, then a glass of water, which he uses to swallow them and hands back.  Then he holds his hand out, not actually feeling okay but knowing he’d rather have Jack there than be not-okay without him, and when Jack gently takes it, pulls him forward into bed.

When Jack slips back under the sheets he cuddles close, close enough that it might be… provocative.  Last night they might have taken the lead but this morning Kent’s mouth goes a little dry as he realizes just how much of a wealth of opportunity he has for initiative; contrary to what he thought, he is _welcome_  to look and touch.  To sample the goods. To go home with them.

He tests it, picking up his head enough to kiss first one, and then the other.

Kent thinks they’re probably making a mistake, but then, it’s not like he hasn’t thought that before.


	3. Chapter 3

He rattles around Jack’s apartment after Bitty leaves for Samwell and it feels… odd. Dislocated. Like somewhere he doesn’t fit without a crucial missing element, like somewhere he visited a thousand times in a dream. 

Jack subscribes to one of the same photography magazines as him; he’s made notations in one of the articles, is considering lenses Kent actually has an informed opinion about. They talk about it over lunch and it feels bizarre to Kent, dreamlike, behind a wall of glass. When Jack gets up from the table Kent reaches out with a hand on his shoulder and kisses him, but he can’t taste it. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. 

This is the shape of getting the thing you thought you wanted: you’ve waited so long you’re both different people and it’s not that he doesn’t love Jack, he just doesn’t know the right aperture setting to take it in right now. 

Jack looks at him, puzzled, concerned, and loads the dishwasher. He draws a glass of water and drinks it, gestures to Kent and refills it when Kent nods that he wants one too. Jack tentatively reaches out to brush hair out of Kent’s eyes and that’s when it hits him, like the air being forced out of his lungs by a hard blow, that this grown man, with his deep grown man’s voice, with his enormous hands, is still the anxious uncertain boy he longed so much for. 

 He reaches up with difficulty, hand clumsy, and covers Jack’s hand with his own to keep it there. To keep it from falling away. 

 He really had given up hope that this man would ever love him back again. He doesn’t know why he’s getting the chance now. (And for all that Jack and Bitty say–he really  _doesn't_ think this might have happened if he were still whole and healthy and playing his hardest. He can’t picture it happening. That is, he can’t picture  _this_ happening and it’s right in front of him; any other scenario is so bizarre it’s off the charts.)

 "I,“ Jack says, visibly hesitant. "Have to go work out. Did you want to come… with me?" 

 "Not really,” Kent says, feeling the acid fleck his tongue. “I really don’t want to be reminded how much better you are right now than me." 

 Jack looks practically scandalized, pulls back, though his hand isn’t totally out of Kent’s grasp. "I didn’t mean, Parse–" 

"Nope,” Kent says, tightening his hand on Jack’s, with a sigh that’s almost routine by now. “Sorry, I’m just gonna be shitty and… really pissed. For a while. Because that’s reality.” Jack moves his grip, laces fingers with him. Kent squeezes his hand, takes his hand back, looks down at his water glass and sighs. “I probably should go work out with you. I’ve been doing a lot of my exercises with Bitty and a Theraband, but having actual equipment would help. I just know that if I go I’m gonna be… really angry with you, that you’re still in the playoffs and not me." 

 Jack looks at him, long and steady, for a moment, and rests his hands on his hips. "I’m okay with that.”  Kent looks up at him and Jack shrugs. “You’ve been pissed off with me before, Kenny. That’s not a good reason to miss workout." 

Jack Zimmermann is a goddamn sonovabitch who works harder than fucking God and deserves to die in a ditch somewhere. "You’re a pain in the fucking ass, you know that, right?" 

Jack shrugs, then moves easily around the kitchen island to get a water bottle out of the cupboard over the stove. He fills it from the tap. "I’ll get you a towel." 

Kent lets his forehead rest against the counter. "Oh, fuck you." 

"I’m hearing a lot of complaining,” Jack says, and raps his knuckles on the counter near Kent’s head, “and not much movement. I want you by the door by the time I have my bag, and the way you move, you’d better get started now.”

 _“Motherfucker,"_ Kent mumbles, but he grabs his crutch from underneath his seat. As he hobbles to the door he yells, "I need the black and blue Therabands from out of my bag." 

"What about the red one?” Jack calls back from the bedroom. 

“Keep it down here, I only use it here anyway,” he says, realizing with belated horror that Jack is going to memorize his entire physical therapy regimen and harp on it, constantly.

* * *

After the workout he’s still angry, the miserable in-pain feeling compounded with frustration and thwarted ambition; the only thing preventing him from outright temper was that with his good leg, he can  _still_ do leg presses with an equivalent proportion of his bodyweight longer than Zimms. He had laughed with victory, when Zimms had laughed feebly and had to give up, breath coming short and legs trembling. 

When they get back to the apartment, charged up and high on adrenaline, Jack looks hesitant again and then kisses Kent in the thick of the energy that’s buzzing around them. 

“What,” Kent says, looping his arms around Jack’s neck, crutch dangling, and leans against him. “You make some nice eyes at me, I forget that I want to kick your fucking ass?" 

Jack purses his lips, then says, "It’s worked for us so far.”

 _Oh god, it has,_ Kent thinks, again that belated moment of wonder and horror and recognition: Jack  _knows_ him. Jack-from-Providence has special elite inside information via Zimms-from-Quebec, and he  _knows_ Kent. He’s seen Kent at his absolute ugliest. He’s still here. Why the  _fuck_ is he still here and what has Kent done to deserve it? 

“Okay,” he says, like a dare. “Try convincing me." 

So Jack does, after pulling him through a goddamn  _shower;_ he gets them clean and takes Kent to bed and puts his mouth on him until Kent’s tough-guy act falls a-fucking- _part_ and he’s just a whining needy mess, which is pretty much how they’ve always functioned.

 _What the fuck,_ Kent thinks again, reverent and outraged.  _Who gave you the right to come back into my life and be so good for me and so not what I’ve always wanted out of you._ He has to ignore very hard the fact that it was  _him. He did._

"Here I thought I was just putting up with you to get at your hot boyfriend,” he says, lying in a puddle in the sheets. “Who’d have thought, you know.  _Us.”_

Jack looks at him indulgently, pulling on a shirt. He leans over onto his forearms to drop a peck on Kent’s lips. “I had a suspicion,” he says, then gets up and goes away.


End file.
